I’ve been working in various customer service, business development, and marketing roles for some leading brands for almost a decade. What continues to amaze me regarding many of the clients our businesses have advised, and given what we have learned in the brands and businesses we own and operate, is the reluctance for some of them to embrace social digital channels as a key strategy in delivering customer service.
Our brand VertiMax, as an example, engages in thousands of support engagements each month around the world. We have adopted Drift for proactive engagement on our website and manage over 27 social channels through Sprout Social, delivering customer support and service 24/7 via those channels.
While VertiMax has really focused on this effort, some of our clients, who respectfully will remain nameless, really do not want to engage in offering service online mostly out of fear. They would, for example, prefer to avoid dealing with customers who are complaining or seeking a resolution of their problem. That in my view is not the way to think about the customer any more. What a lost opportunity to make things right and be helpful after all for the world to see.
So how important is customer service via social media? Are you skeptical like some of our clients when considering a customer service strategy that uses social media and digital channels? Consider these facts:
According to J.D. Power, 67% of consumers have used a company’s social media channel for customer service.
According to Pew Research Center, around seven-in-ten Americans use social media to connect with one another, engage with news content, share information and entertain themselves.
And when they do, they expect a fast response. Research cited by Jay Baer tells us that 42% of consumers expect a response within 60 minutes.
So, how’s your social media customer service? Reconsidering why you should rely on these platforms as a great customer service tool? Well you would be smart to do that.
If you still don’t believe that you should be delivering customer service using social media channels here are 3 great reasons from leading experts to understand why you should:
Social Media Usage Fact Sheet From Pew Research
If you know Pew Research than you know they are one of the most reputable organizations there is to learn about the impact of digital among other trends. Here is an excerpt from their recent report Social Media Fact Sheet:
“Today around seven-in-ten Americans use social media to connect with one another, engage with news content, share information and entertain themselves. Explore the patterns and trends shaping the social media landscape over the past decade...When Pew Research Center began tracking social media adoption in 2005, just 5% of American adults used at least one of these platforms. By 2011 that share had risen to half of all Americans, and today 72% of the public uses some type of social media.”
The bottomline is that the vast majority of your customers are on the social digital platforms of today. You need to be where your customers are and most importantly listen to what they have to say even when it is not what you might want to hear. As author and keynote speaker Jay Baer said, “Today, complainers – haters are the canaries in the coal mine. They are the early warning detection system for your business”.
Two Way Conversation
When it comes to creating your customer service strategy, social media allows for a two way conversation, which impact-fully creates a humanized approach and connection with your audience.
Think about the times you had issues with a product or service and your feedback had not been addressed or even acknowledged. How did this make you feel? Social Media grants a platform for your audience to share their feedback, be heard and communicated back to. This public acknowledgement shows others that your business cares to service the customer and directly relates to business growth.
According to Gartner, a leading Global Research Company, “15% in churn rate for existing customers, when companies fail to respond to customers via social channels.”
Even if the issue has passed and now out of your hands, bringing awareness to the complaint and empathizing with the customer can turn a potential PR disaster to a lightning recommendation. Take a look at how jetBlue addressed a complaint with two way communication that then lead to a positive review:
Two way communication doesn’t just fall in line with complaints, it also helps lead into the third reason on why companies should deliver customer service through social media, for Brand Loyalty.
Brand Loyalty
Social media allows our businesses to create a connection with their audience that was never there before. The strengthened customer support through engagements, personalized messages, customized responses and showing emotions bonds the brand to the audience creating the most powerful brand loyalty to this day.
A study conducted by Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, showed that “brand loyalty of the customers is positively affected when the brand appears on various platforms and offers applications on social media.”
VertiMax is a great example of having a strong representation of brand loyalty through its audience. Millions of engagements are recorded monthly and as a team we respond to every comment, tag, share, and hashtag to help build and support those ambassadors. Here is just one little example of social media supporting our customers journeys and receiving additional coverage.
Encouraging customers on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms is a great way to create these loyal customers who act as your brand ambassadors in turn lead to business success.
Social media allows us to have a platform to connect with an empowering amount of people. It’s up to us to make this connection a favorable or detrimental experience for our businesses. Your customer service strategy can elevated when you implement social media as a key tool to your operations.
Now, how do you feel about the presence of YOUR social media in helping support your Customer Service approach?
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Jessie Ehren has been in the fitness industry for 12 years and with the Moon Mission Media team for 2. With a focus on education and marketing, she is a content creator, social media manager, and education coordinator. Jessie loves working with clients that have the same passion for fitness and wellness that she does and uses her creative mind to create for them top-notch content and authentic community engagement.
Jessie has a knack to skillfully hone and realize a company mission, bringing integrity, honesty, creativity, and compassion to all of her work. Known for her attention to detail, Jessie is super easy to work with and loves getting to know her clients in order to meet and exceed their every marketing need.